Experts from the National Center for PTSD recommend that Americans who want to be sensitive about their fireworks should have a conversation with their neighbors about how the sounds might affect them.
Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

For many mass shooting survivors, Fourth of July fireworks are a challenge, not a sign of celebration. It is an issue that military veterans and survivors of everyday gun violence have dealt with for years: the loud bangs of America’s Independence Day fireworks can trigger symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

This year it will be a new experience for the teens who survived school shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas, in the spring.

Experts from the National Center for PTSD recommend that Americans who want to be sensitive about their fireworks should have a conversation with their neighbors about how the sounds might affect them, or at least give them a heads up about what time the fireworks will be set off.

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Emma González, the 18-year-old activist from Parkland, Florida, shared a request for this kind of sensitivity earlier in June, with those in the area where her high school there, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, was the scene of a mass shooting on Valentine’s Day that took 17 lives. She asked those in Parkland and nearby Coral Springs to be aware of the impact fireworks might have on their neighbors, including “nearly 3,500 students and faculty facing the short and long-term effects” of the school shooting.

“Fireworks produce noises much like gunshots, and unexpected fireworks can/will cause physical and mental distress in those directly affected by the tragedy. Please be careful,” an image González shared on Twitter advised.

The post suggested that local Florida residents notify their neighbors of any plans to set off fireworks, consider alternative ways of celebrating, including using sparklers or decorating cakes, and allow for a “judgment-free zone” for people sensitive to loud noises.

In California, a veterans group sold and gave away 150 yard signs advising neighbors to be sensitive about fireworks because a combat veteran lived there.

“I’ve had phone calls from Kentucky, from Florida,” Jesse Leal, the vice-commander of Marines: Central California Veterans, the group that organized the sign campaign, told the Guardian. “We’re completely sold out.”

Leal, a retired gunnery sergeant who served for 22 years, including in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq, said he posted a sign on his own lawn.

Every year, the noise, the bang, the flashes – it does bring flashbacks of being there

Jesse Leal, a retired gunnery sergeant

“I suffer from PTSD myself,” he said. “Every year, the noise, the bang, the flashes – it does bring flashbacks of being there, and I wake up, and my wife says I’m covered in sweat.”

Displaying the sign prompted a conversation with his neighbors, who came over to tell him they had not known that fireworks might affect him that way, and to promise that they would set off their fireworks away from his home.

Like other service members, Leal said, he had previously been reluctant to talk about his post-traumatic stress. “I never went out there,” he said. “It’s more of a pride thing. That sign speaks for us.”

Next year, he said, the marine veterans group hopes to distribute thousands of signs, working to make sure that any veteran who needs one can get it.

It’s not just neighbors of military veterans, or residents of cities that have seen recent mass shootings, who might need to think twice about setting off fireworks in their backyards. The burden of America’s everyday gun violence falls disproportionately on Americans of color. Studies of the areas most burdened by shootings have found high rates of post-traumatic stress among residents. A series of federally funded studies in Atlanta found that about 30% of respondents had symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress – a rate comparable, or even higher, than for veterans of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Many families who experience or witness community violence are veterans of a different kind of combat,” said Nicky MacCallum, the counseling services director at Youth Alive! an Oakland, California-based non-profit that works with survivors of neighborhood violence.

A few years ago, MacCallum worked with one client, a seven-year-old boy who had witnessed his sibling being shot in Oakland. The sound of fireworks after baseball games in a nearby Oakland stadium affected him so deeply that “he would curl up in the fetal position when the fireworks would go off”.

To help the family, MacCallum worked with them to figure out when fireworks were scheduled at the stadium, so they could plan in advance, as well as teaching the child age-appropriate coping skills.

Having advance warning “can help people who experience trauma triggers better prepare and cope with any symptoms they may experience”, MacCallum said.

“Actively going to the fireworks show and seeing the fireworks happen can be helpful for some people as well,” MacCallum said. “It’s not just the sound far in the distance. You’re present, and you’re witnessing the display.”

While the seven-year-old’s family could not afford to go to the game to see the fireworks in person, they found that they were able to see the lights from the stadium display from one of their bathroom windows. Having the seven-year-old watch the visual display of the fireworks, associating the troubling sound with the pretty lights, also helped, MacCallum said.

National Center for PTSD experts said that post-traumatic stress symptoms vary from person to person, and that not everyone with post-traumatic stress reacts to the same triggers, or reacts in the same way.

For Americans with post-traumatic stress, “it’s not the fireworks on the Fourth, that are scheduled, and people know it’s coming” that cause the most distress, but “when your neighbors start shooting off fireworks on the third”, without any warning, said Dr Sonya Norman, the director of the PTSD consultation program at the National Center for PTSD, which is run by the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Common coping strategies for veterans with post-traumatic stress include using loud music to drown out the sound, “getting in the shower so all they hear is the noise of running water”, Norman said.

People dealing with post-traumatic stress can also cope with fireworks by seeking out support from people in their lives, and letting them know “that they’re anticipating that this can be a problem”, and what kind of support they might need, said Dr Shannon Wiltsey Stirman, the acting deputy director of the national center’s dissemination and training division.

That support can be simple, she said: “Engaging in things that can distract them, or being available to talk to them if it triggers things that they would like to talk about.”

All of these coping mechanisms “are good short-term strategies”, Norman said. “Long term, the better solution is to get good, evidence-based treatment and try to make it so it’s not a night that’s all about how to minimize the distress.”

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One of the most troubling public misconceptions about post-traumatic stress is the idea that it’s not treatable, she said. In fact, there have been major advances over the past 15 years in developing evidence-based treatments that can provide significant relief to people with PTSD.

Another important factor is that even people who do not have a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress may experience some of the symptoms of exposure to trauma, particularly if the trauma is relatively recent.

“It doesn’t meant that someone has PTSD if they find the fireworks very hard this year,” Norman said.